Best Election Backers, Ever!

Daniel Friesen
2013 Mayoral Re-election Campaign
Buhler, Kansas

 

 

 

all images courtesy Re-elect Friesen for Mayor, Facebook, 01 April 2013.

Finally, a Definitive Word on Tatarstan and Mexico's Mennonites

Time to add a new decal?  Russian Mennonite - Tatarstan

The American press has finally discovered the story about Mexican Mennonites possibly returning to Tatarstan, Russia.

Please follow this link to Tim Johnson's excellent coverage of this story in the Kansas City Star:

Johnson, Tim, "To Some Mennonites in Mexico, Russia Looks Like Promised Land," 11 Nov 2012

Neu Bruderthaler's comments:

An excellent article.  Thank you Tim for taking the time to research this story properly.  It is very informative.

I do have some unease with Dr. Koth's remark which might indicate a clearer connection and gross oversimplification between the Russian Revolution and the immigration of the Mennonites out of Russia and Ukraine than is the case.   The primary immigration to North America, as most Kansans recall from their state history courses, immigrated in the 1870s when Alexander II's policies towards minorities became increasingly irrational and ambivalent and Mennonites were faced with the threat of losing their freedoms of religion, individual conscience and from mandatory military service.  Many Mennonites chose to immigrate to North America while many chose to stay during this time and negotiate further regarding these freedoms with the Czar.  The farms of those leaving were sold to either Mennonites who remained in Russia-Ukraine or to Russians and Ukrainians desiring new farmland.

Arguably, it was the unrest created by the Revolution and contact with invading German armies who promised stability and protection during WWI and WWII that caused the greatest impetus for further immigration amongst those who stayed.   But land appropriation was only one concern -- much more important was the general level of social and political violence encouraged by the early Soviet regime and Stalin's administration, natural and man-made famines, the imposed atheism of the Soviet state and the horrors of the Holodomar -- one of the darkest periods of Ukraine's history.

Maintaining the Lineage of our Faith

ne Frädhoff (en kjoakjhoff)

Cmetarz mennonitow (Mennonite Cemetery in Poland) (c) A. T. Przechlewski

    Often it is only historians and new mourners who worry about the upkeep of our ethnic heritage sites such as graveyards and cemeteries.  Perhaps the time has come to consider the need for a national (international?) Mennonite foundation to begin looking after this aspect of our shared and endangered diasporaic heritage.  For an ethnicity of historic religious and political refugees, these remnants of our periodic stops along the Martyrs’ Trek, are essential historic markers preserving the dignity and truth of our group narrative and missionary outreach.  While many have traveled to view the graves of our ancestors in Amsterdam, Danzig, Poland and Ukraine, future generations will likewise look towards graveyards in Litchfield, Henderson, Coaldale, Steinbach, Yarrow and Chinook for traces of their (our) family stories – and signs of the historic faith that led our faith predecessors to migrate and to establish new homes.

    Recently (25 April 2012), Jennifer Stultz alerted us via the Peabody Gazette of the challenges of maintaining this shared heritage.  She quotes Catlin Cemetery upkeeper Don Stutzman, “We’re having trouble maintaining the cemetery and could use some help. … There is a lot of history to learn here yet and we are searching for a way to sustain the upkeep,” (Stultz, see below).

Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer

    One of my favorite authors has published a nifty little Postmodern religious primer on what those of us in the Evangelical world coyly refer to as Protestant Latin.  Protestant Latin is perhaps not as different perhaps as traditional Russländer Plautdietsch, but infinitely more complicated.

    In Amacing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris takes Protestant Latin head-on, detailing her vocabulary of faith, while expounding on why those definitions are pertinent to her rich spiritual life.  One of the terms that she explores, Ebenezer, comes to her from a popular hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” which begins the second stanza, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer; Hither by thy help I’m come,” (Norris, p. 251).  While many would recognize the term Ebenezer as the Christian name of Charles Dickens’ most memorable Christmas character, Ebenezer Scrooge, Norris reveals its deeper pedigree:  “The word Ebenezer is found in a passage in First Samuel, one of the historical books of the Hebrew scriptures.  It describes an event, the celebration of Israel’s victory over the Philistine army, a victory that came against the odds, when the thundering voice of God threw the troops into confusion, and they fled.  The passage reads: ‘Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us’ (1 Sam 7:12, KJV),” (Norris, p. 251).